Friday, 14 December 2018

It's that time again - it's 9:45 on a Friday night! Coincidentally the exact same time and day that it was that I posted my most recent blog post, which actually isn't so recent since I posted it in June, and it's now December. I've started calling myself a sporadic blogger these days, I neglect this blog not because I want to but because I struggle to find time and motivation. I need to get better at it! It feels right, and good, sitting here word-vomiting all over the internet.

I suppose I should talk about diabetes, right? It's funny, I spend my days thinking about diabetes, about what my blood sugar is, how much insulin I should take, but I often run out of things to say about it. It's a small part of my life, and as much as it has taken up residency here, I still manage to keep it small, I keep it in a corner, sometimes that's good and sometimes not so good and sometimes I can't really control what it does and it runs up the stairs even though I've told it it's not allowed up there - and to stay off of the bed!

I took my words and my ramblings and my diabetes onto a stage again this year - at the Diabetes Professional Care Conference, to talk about how important the 'Transition' stage is in young people with Type 1 Diabetes. Thankfully it was received very well, it was my first public speaking jaunt for a long time - still got it! I was humbled by the amount of Healthcare professionals who approached me and the other speakers afterwards to ask about how they can make transition smoother for their patients and how they can get them to engage after they've moved to adult clinic. I don't get much time to do loads of advocacy stuff anymore now that I have a full time job, but when I get the chance to do it it feels really good.

I'm still on injections, still trying to get my pump back. I get it out of the draw every once in a while and just stare at it - something so expensive, and so valuable, collecting dust. I understand that I'm not quite "there" in terms of getting it back but I wish someone would just let me try, let me prove it's worth. I feel like it's the motivation I need and it's so close (literally, in my drawer) but so far away, in the hands of my diabetes team - it's a shame we don't get trial runs. I feel like 12 year old me again, fed up of injecting 5+ times a day, the difference being it was much easier to get a pump back then.

I'm hoping for a Libre, the consultant I saw in clinic a few weeks ago told me she was going to ask the wider team about Libre funding for me - she still told me it's "unlikely" - at least she's not giving me false expectations...however, I can't have my pump back so let me try this properly, I've already proved the Libres worth with days and days of data showing how much better I am at controlling my blood sugar with it. It's so frustrating having to prove everything to someone who is so far removed from your life. Don't get me wrong, I believe in my team and I do think they're good people, it's just frustrating. Note to self: Use words other than 'Frustrating'.

I am thankful for the psychologist at clinic though, psychologists are a luxury in the world of diabetes it seems, especially in adult clinic. It's so helpful to go through my thoughts and feelings and understand why sometimes I feel the way I do. One huge thing I found is that I tend to invalidate my own emotions, especially when it comes to diabetes. I don't do it with everything, but I do it with things that are ever so slightly negotiable, like getting upset over a boy or something.

I've been learning that to be emotional doesn't make me weak. I never thought that, nor do I think that about anyone else either, but it was something I always held against myself. Everything is relative.

Speaking of teams, I saw my old team a couple of times this year, they asked me to help them out with their 'transition days'. They hosted sessions for the young people under their care who are about to transition to adult clinic and I was there as a kind of, "Hey, I've been through this so I can answer your questions!" It was a lovely experience and so nice to see my old diabetes team, especially my old consultant, who did so much for me.

Twitter-land is still a significant part of life with diabetes, I have taken a step back though, I don't tweet much at the moment. It's a very divided world at times and I just can't be bothered to get involved. One thing I did get involved with though was the whole Diabetic/Patients with Diabetes debate - I feel like my opinion is so controversial on this but I'll say it anyway, and I'll say it even louder for the people in the back - I do not care what I am called. If someone says "Are you diabetic?" I say yes. I am diabetic. You are correct. Because I know that it isn't all that I am and I don't for one second think that other people think that either. But then again, each to their own, if it upsets you then sorry, it's just my opinion and I respect other people's opinions too but these days, if I can, I choose my battles, and this is not a battle I care to fight.

I think I'm going to wrap this ramble up now. Well done if you read all the way to the end. I don't imagine many people will read this but if you did read it - thanks! Hopefully I can write something a little more interesting to post other than all the thoughts that are swirling around in my head, but at the same time, it feels nice to write them down.

Friday, 1 June 2018

It's been a while...I haven't written a blog post since October last year - my blog posts have been few and far between for a long time now, so much so that I don't even call myself a blogger anymore, not even sporadic.

I can't pin point one specific reason for my stopping, my passion for blogging just gradually faded and along with my fading passion I found myself fading. I found myself not enjoying the things I used to enjoy, I lost my mojo, I lost my spark, I lost myself. I didn't know who I was anymore, I wasn't a blogger anymore, or a diabetes advocate, or bubbly (albeit irritable ha!) anymore, I didn't realise who or what I was until I finally came out of the cloud I was in and looked back and realised I spent most of the end of last year sitting in my room, in the dark.

I used to have a very thick skin, I liked to see myself as "strong" and prided myself in my ability to control my emotion and not be overcome by it. However as the years have gone on I have found myself more and more consumed by emotion and my terrible lack of ability to accept things that I can't change. People have a larger influence on me now than I ever thought possible, and for the most part that's not a good thing because I opened myself up way too much, it's one of those things that you look back on in retrospect and wonder why you didn't see it coming. However those who have a positive influence on me I'm incredibly grateful for.

I find my intense awareness of myself and my emotions and life in general both a blessing and a curse. I can hold the deepest of conversations with you about the world and life until my brain hurts, and enjoy thinking about it all or I can be completely overwhelmed by everything. There's no in between. I think I'll always question the meaning of life and why certain things happen and why grass is green or why cats meow and dogs bark and why animals don't talk and why some people fall in love and others don't and what DID come first the chicken or the egg?! I'm inquisitive and always have been and my mind is a constant stream of thoughts.

Sometimes the thoughts aren't helpful to me, I have OCD and it makes your anxieties and your fears and your worries 10x worse because a worry will pop into your head and it won't leave. It's almost torturous, it just spins round and round in your head and you're forced to think about it and worry about it until something else takes it's place. My old psychologist said to me - "the more you try not to think about something the more you think about it!" and it's so true. I see a new psychologist now because my move to adult clinic back in 2016 spelled the end of my appointments with her. The new psychologist is lovely too, I wasn't sure about her at first but she really wants to help me and I just have to trust that opening up to her is fine.

I have a job now. I really enjoy it, it also really helps with my diabetes. I have a routine now and it feels good. Not to mention my manager has Type 1 and so does someone else in the office. I love hearing pumps beeping and test strip pots popping open and insulin pens being wound up while I'm typing up the minutes from a meeting or sending out e-mails. I also work with a bunch of wonderful people who create a wonderful working environment.

I also have a car now. I passed my driving test on my fourth go earlier this year. What an adrenaline rush that was!

When I stopped blogging and I took a step back from all the diabetes advocacy I found myself in other ways, I started practicing hand lettering more and I focused more on getting a job and I found a different identity to the one I'd been identifying with for so long: a diabetes blogger and advocate. While I love being an advocate for Type 1 and helping others and I am so proud of this blog, I never had a personal agenda when I started this - and I was determined not to let blogging become a chore or something I felt I needed to do to stay relevant or get invited to diabetes events - when I feel the want to blog, I blog, if I don't, I don't blog, and when I do blog I want it to offer some sort of insight or advice or comfort to someone else, and if none of that, to myself.

I assume no one is reading this, because, well, why would you read my ramblings at 9.45pm on a Friday night? I suppose I just needed to vent and to get my feelings out. As always with life I've had good and bad moments and I suppose I need to learn to go with the flow as hard as that may be for certain things. I used to be so good at being present, and being in the moment and enjoying good things for what they are and not worrying about what will come next but now I struggle to be in the moment and I think I need to learn to find that again. And I need to learn to let certain things go, no matter how much it might hurt or how much I care.There's lots of things that my mental health taking a dip in the deep end took away from me but also I see it as a chance to come out stronger.

My HbA1c is 10.2% now. Sometimes I think that my struggle with staying on top of my diabetes will be a perpetual struggle but I often remind myself that I can do this, I absolutely know I can. I'm realising my new team actually aren't all bad, it's just a shame they fall victim to the time constraints and everything else that's wrong with the NHS, as wonderful as it is it doesn't make the discrepancies that we come across any better. As I'm typing this I just hit the giant bruise that my most recent Tresiba injection left on my stomach, a reminder that I'm working on getting my pump back so that my skin won't look so much like a pin cushion.

On the bright side, I'm ok! And I feel a bit more like me again these days. I smiled to myself when I typed that first sentence into this text box, because while it has been a while since I wrote a blog post I'm back to write this one. I hope I can get back into the swing of things with my blog and I hope for good things and good thoughts and sunny days.

Friday, 20 October 2017

This week's tweet chat was all about living beyond Diabetes and how we live beyond. The first question was all about if we see diabetes as a barrier, if we see it as something that stops us from achieving our dreams and it's safe to say that was a unanimous no. Most of us do not see it as a barrier and in fact a lot of us see it as something that spurs us on to do better, to prove people wrong, to prove that actually we can do anything we set our minds to despite having diabetes.

The thing about living with Type 1 Diabetes is that it's 24/7, it doesn't stop and we can't take a break from it, so Type 1 can have an affect on your general life let alone trying to live beyond and do amazing things. However, for the people who achieve incredible things like running marathons with Type 1 or scaling mountains, Type 1 diabetes is irrelevant. It's a challenge, it's an extra precaution but in the grand scheme of things, in the bigger picture, Type 1 diabetes is not a barrier. In fact, it makes the achievement even sweeter, because you did it all while proving Type 1 Diabetes cannot stop you. You will however, not find me up a mountain, not because I have Type 1 Diabetes but because I'm lazy and I hate heights, and that was the general consensus with a lot of us who don't harbour the desire to be adrenaline junkies or do extraordinary things, it's not Type 1 that stops us...it's our character as people, ha ha.

We also got into a discussion about personal achievements. I think it's really easy to forget that everything is relative, and people's circumstances are different and living beyond your circumstances alone can be an achievement. What may be something really insignificant to one person, might be really significant to another and to the person achieving it. You don't have to do something extraordinary to live beyond, everything is relative. For example, Jules (hope you don't mind me mentioning you Jules!) wants to walk down Clacton Pier again and for her, that will be a hugely significant personal achievement.

I'm rambling a little bit but I hope I'm still making sense...

Life with Type 1 Diabetes is a challenge and it's not easy and it's not a barrier, unless you want to fly a commercial aircraft or join the army! Plus we make small achievements in living with Type 1 every day that all add up, like having good blood sugars all day or trying a new cannula site you were nervous about using or getting your repeat prescription in on time! Life in general is full of little achievements and extraordinary achievements and they all matter.

Type 1 Diabetes seems to have the ability to either make or break you, and I think it's better to let it make you. Let it spur you on, let it make you live your life to the full because it may be a challenge but as I said, it's certainly not impossible to live with Type 1 and it's certainly not impossible to live beyond Type 1.

Saturday, 14 October 2017

This year I made the decision to start volunteering for Diabetes UK on their Family and Children's Holidays. These events take place every year and they're run predominantly by volunteers, most of whom have Type One Diabetes or are affected by Type One Diabetes. I was diagnosed with Type One at 11 years old, I was always a home bird so didn't ever have the desire to be away from home let alone go away for a week. By the time I was around 18 and too old to go on a Diabetes UK Holiday I realised that I really regretted not going on one of the holidays as a child and decided that volunteering would be the next best thing and I knew it would be super rewarding. I've always done the "high-profile" things to raise awareness of Type One Diabetes like going to Parliament and attending cool events and writing this blog and although I have loved and love doing it all, I wanted to do something on a personal, smaller scale, something that will have a more direct and positive impact on the lives of those with Type One Diabetes and even their parents.

May 2017 saw me take part in my first event as a volunteer when I went to volunteer on a Family Weekend. On the Family Weekends the children go back to their parents in the evening and our jobs as volunteers are mainly during the day. The Family Weekends are a wonderful and thoroughly enjoyed by both children and their parents. It's a chance for the children to meet other children with Type One Diabetes but it's also a chance for their siblings to meet other siblings of a child with Type 1. Furthermore, it's a chance for the parents to meet other parents and essentially get a little "break" from dealing with Type 1 for a few hours each day over the weekend. This was my first experience of volunteering on an event so of course I was a little bit apprehensive and not sure exactly what to expect, but the other volunteers made me feel so welcome and I couldn't fault them in any way. it was a wonderful first experience and spurred me on to want to do a week-long event.

That brings us to August this year, I volunteered on a week-long Holiday for 8-10 year olds. On the week-long events the children get dropped off by their parents and all spend a week playing games and doing fun activities and getting to know other children with Type One Diabetes, it's also a chance for them to try to be a little bit more independent. The week-long events are definitely more full on than the weekend because our responsibility not only lies during the day but during the night too, it's pretty much guaranteed that you won't be in bed before at least midnight, unless you're on night-check duty then you won't get to sleep until the early hours! It all sounds intense, but when you have an amazing group of volunteers around you it's actually really good fun.

The activities on the week-long event included High Ropes, Canoeing, Abseiling, Campfire, King Swing, and loads more. I only had one reservation before Volunteering on this event, I'm terrified of heights! However, I think this made me want to volunteer on the event more, because I wanted to set myself a personal challenge. Haha! Every single day is filled with fun and adventure, and watching the children take part in the activities was so lovely, to see them forget about having diabetes and just have fun. As volunteers we took part in the activities too (it's definitely not compulsory but it's nice to take part, and you'll find the children really want you to take part too!) and the activities that required me to be any more than a foot off the ground made me quite nervous to say the least, however looking back I am proud of myself because I managed to abseil. I had every expectation of getting to the top of that tower and wanting to go back down...however there were a few things that stopped me coming to this decision:

1. You had to climb ladders to get to the top, and climbing back down all those ladders did not appeal to me.
2. I would have really regretted it if I didn't at least try.
3. One of the little girls in my group exclaimed: "I'll do it after Ellie does it!!"

...Damn. However, I knew as soon as she said it that I had to do it, for her, for me, to get to the bottom! I had a little girl who was just as, if not more scared than I was relying on me, so I sucked it up, felt the fear and did it anyway. I'm so glad I did and straight after me she did it too and I was so proud of her, and me! Another activity I was apprehensive about was Canoeing, but again I put on that life jacket, picked up that ore and got into the canoe. I have never stepped foot in a canoe in my life, let alone be in a canoe with three 8 year old girls and having to teach them how to use their ores! It was an experience to say the least, one of the girls is terrified of spiders so she spent a lot of time trying to move from the spiders that were on the bottom of the canoe and almost capsizing the boat when she slid from side to side! I stepped on a few so she could have a good time and not worry about the spiders and all was calm until "There's a mouse in the boat!!" Oh hell no. I was determined not to get wet so all I was saying was "Please stay sitting!" Anyway turns out it was a Shrew and the girls did amazingly well in ignoring it and it enjoyed it's journey with us around the lake. We also had a competition to see who could turn their canoe 360 degrees the quickest and we beat the boys! It was little moments like during abseiling and canoeing that I sit back and dwell on now and think, I totally made the right decision volunteering.

Seeing the children get the most out of it and learn how to be a bit more independent with their diabetes and being the ones to help them do that is so rewarding and both the weekends and the week-long events are a truly amazing experience. You do have a lot of responsibility on your shoulders though, because despite it being truly fun, they are children & the children do have Type One Diabetes and as we all know, that requires a lot of attention! Blood sugar checking is in abundance as well as cannula changes and injections and boluses...all of which volunteers help out with and oversee. At meal times everyone carb counts and this is a good chance for the children to learn more about it. There are Health Care Professionals such as nurses and doctors and dietitians who volunteer on the camps too.

Every second volunteering on these Holidays is enjoyable and post-camp blues are truly a real thing. You spend a weekend or a week with all of these wonderful people and children with Type One Diabetes or who have been affected by Type One. Your fellow volunteers are a support network, all looking out for each other and helping one another and you all get to know each other fast. You also realise the resilience of children and although I have Type One myself and was diagnosed as a child too I'm always in awe of children with Type One because they deal with it with such grace and they're there to have fun, and let me tell you, they bounce right back even after a low or a high blood sugar or a stressful cannula change.

It's rewarding and it's character building and I wouldn't change the experiences I've had volunteering for the world. I hope I get accepted on the Holiday's that I apply for next year. If you're thinking about volunteering I really, really recommend it, you won't regret it.

Tuesday, 10 October 2017

Today was Mental Health Awareness Day. I feel like mental illness is an incredibly taboo subject, people don't like to talk about it, they don't like to acknowledge it, perhaps because some people don't believe that it's a problem, or they don't understand it, or they're scared to explore it and accept it for what it is, an illness. Our minds can be broken just as an arm can be, only I think the healing process is a lot tougher. I've never had perfect mental health, I get anxious, I've struggled with OCD...and in some of my darkest days I've disliked having OCD more than my Type One Diabetes, more than my physical, potentially life-threatening illness, disease, condition, whatever you want to call it. I won't go into too much detail about it, but I'm of course not ashamed to admit my mental health struggles and admit that they have caused me hardship on a par with my diabetes.

You can't escape your mind, that's the bottom line and I think what makes it so difficult, thoughts and feelings are what determine our day, they're what determine our reaction to things and what make up who we are. Think about it, you have your own voice swimming around your head 24/7 and when that voice is negative, or scary or not what you want to think about, it's distressing and it's unpleasant. My psychologist always said to me that the more you try not to think about something, the more you think about it, and I've never heard anything more true. None of us are perfect and I'm yet to meet someone who hasn't struggled mentally, we of course to an extent are in control of our minds, but when that mind gets sick and doesn't work like you want it to, you in a sense are at a loss.

The mind is so powerful and despite it being mental, it invokes very real, very physical symptoms in people. Being anxious is me having a panic attack on top of the Empire State Building on a visit to New York last year because I'm so afraid of heights and the hustle and bustle of so many people 80 floors up is so overwhelming that my physical state went to pot. It's scary and it's the lack of control over what you're thinking and how you react to that situation, to this day I'll always be annoyed that I couldn't enjoy my time up that building because I was so anxious.

I've spent nights crying because dealing with OCD to me is not just wanting everything to be tidy and colour co-ordinated as people jokingly portray it: it's trying to push out negative thoughts and stop the "routines" that I carry out every day because my mind convinces me that if I don't do it, something terrible will happen. Mental illness is so real and so common and the stigma that people with mental health issues are crazy or that they're doing it for attention or it's "not real" needs to stop. I am incredibly normal! I'm one of many.

Thankfully, I get on ok with it all now, and I'm thankful that it's not worse and that I can function, lots of people with mental health issues aren't that lucky.

Your mind is so complex. Every day, every second your thoughts and your emotions are changing and your mind is trying to make sense of things and it's a busy environment. Honestly, who is normal, who can honestly say they've never felt anxious or affected by their mind and it's state?

It's like with Type One Diabetes, I'm sure none of us can say that we haven't been affected by it mentally. The fear of hypos, the fear of going high, the anxiety surrounding needles, the mental effect that physical exhaustion from dealing with a condition that requires your attention 24/7 has on you can be significant. Diabetes burnout...we all make the decision every single day to check our blood sugar and to take our insulin because we know we have to and if we don't it can have detrimental effects, but when you're going through diabetes burnout that mindset goes out of the window, your mind is tired, you get tired of the tedious everyday grind of living with Type One Diabetes. Thankfully for some these periods come and go, and for others they can get stuck in a rut. One of the many reasons I think psychological support for people with diabetes is so important, it's so psychologically complex, we have a lot on our shoulders, we make important decisions every single day and the toll it can have on your mental health is real.

I suppose what I'm getting at here, is that your mind and it's function and purpose in our lives is significant and when it doesn't work properly, life can't really work properly can it...we make decisions, react to situations, feel emotion...all with our minds...and if that busy environment that is swimming around your head is negative or impacted in some way by mental illness or the mental effects of something like living with Type One, things can get a little bit messy. It's hard to heal a broken mind, it takes a lot of strength and determination, to battle your own thoughts and be mindful and not let whatever you're going through take over. It can be done though, and of course, there is always hope and you're never alone.

Tuesday, 3 October 2017

I have been reflecting on last week's GBDOC tweet chat that was titled 'Diabetes and Disability'. This is always a really interesting subject because people have so many different opinions and ways in which they see themselves.

The Equality Act of 2010 protects people with Type 1 Diabetes in that it requires an employer to make reasonable adjustments for disabled employees or job applicants in the workplace. The purpose of Type 1 Diabetes being considered under the Equality Act is because it can and does affect us in some capacity at work, it has an impact on us 24/7. You could say that in some sense, we are "disadvantaged" in that we may need to take short breaks to treat a low blood sugar or take time off for hospital appointments, this can lead to discrimination because your employer may be more concerned about losing money with you having time off rather than your ability to actually do the job. However, there are still jobs that people with Type 1 Diabetes are not allowed to do, such as joining the Armed Forces or flying a commerical plane, this is because in any of these environments something like a low blood sugar can put people at risk or make you a liability, plus airline pilots need 20/20 vision and complications like Retinopathy jeapordise this.

The complications and symptoms that come with Type 1 Diabetes can be "disabling" in that they can have a significant impact on your day to day life. For example, the symptoms of high blood sugar can have an affect in that it they can make you feel too unwell to do things, likewise with low blood sugar. More severe physical impacts for both include DKA, passing out, seizures...all of which can leave you "less able" than a healthy person, although temporary, they're still impacting your ability. The more permanent affects of Type 1 Diabetes like kidney disease, blindness, and limb amputation are a bit of a different ball game, because then it's not just Type 1 Diabetes you've got, it's other health issues that are in and of themselves, disabling.

Despite it being challenging, the GBDOC tweet chat confirmed that many people with Type 1 Diabetes, including me, do not consider themselves disabled. The Equality Act and due to the restrictions of some jobs, it can appear that this is the case, however, any 'limitations' we might encounter, only spur us on to prove people wrong and prove that our challenges can be overcome. Generally speaking, I am physically able and do not consider myself to be disabled in any capacity. I just think it's interesting to explore in what sense we are considered to be 'disabled'....

We have the capacity to do anything, except be a commercial airline pilot and join the army! Which is fine for me because I don't like flying and have no desire to join the army!

Tuesday, 20 June 2017

Dear past Ellie, Ellie from June 20th 2009 to be precise, it's future Ellie here, talking to you 8 years later. Tomorrow will be June 21st 2009, you're going to be doing the Race For Life for the first time, you're not feeling 100% but you know you'll give it your all. You'll finish the race and eat a cereal bar and you'll go home. You won't be thinking about the fact that just days earlier you had a blood test that showed your fasting blood glucose was 16mmol...because the GP told you he wanted to double-check...so it was fine, right? But you'll still go home to the blood sugar meter mum bought for you to keep an eye on things because thankfully she knew the symptoms of Type 1 Diabetes, and deep down you'll both know that the fasting blood test wasn't wrong. That blood sugar meter will show a blood sugar reading that was off the scale at "HI" and you'll be diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in A&E that same day. You're eleven years old.

Months of symptoms means your diagnosis will be a relief in some sense, at eleven years old you're old enough to understand what's happening and just a few days before told yourself that you just needed insulin and you will be fine. You stopped growing, you lost weight and at your height you shouldn't weigh 6 and a half stone. Before being diagnosed all you did was sleep, and wonder why you felt the way you did. You'll leave hospital three days after being diagnosed, equipped with everything you'll need to now stay alive, you'll take it in your stride and you'll go back to school and settle into life with Type 1 Diabetes. For the first few weeks you'll find yourself very aware of your own mortality, and you'll realise you're not invincible, but you'll be grateful that you can live a relatively normal life despite the diagnosis.

Most of the time it will be fine, you'll feel in control and you'll feel okay. But you won't know that the first few years will be an especially hard feat, your HbA1c will stay in the teens and you will prefer to ignore your diabetes rather than deal with it. You'll know you're not in denial, but you'll know you'd prefer not to have Type 1, you will remember the days without it. The hard times will show you how lucky you are to have the support that you have from your friends and family, and your diabetes team, you'll find your feet eventually, but not before becoming very familiar with the phrase "diabetes burnout" and realising you're well and truly stuck there.

In August 2012 you'll make a Twitter profile, and you'll encounter lots of other people living with Type 1 Diabetes but you won't properly engage with them until March 2013, when you start your blog. You started it to rant and vent your feelings about living with Type 1 Diabetes, but people will start to read it and it will be the spur you need to find motivation and start living properly again. Eventually you'll see a HbA1c back in single figures and your consultant will high five you, aware of what it's taken you to get there. It won't always be easy and diabetes burnout will still linger, making sporadic appearances, but it will be pushed to the back of your mind through all the amazing experiences you'll have due to being an ambassador for Type 1 and "embracing" your diagnosis.

In 2013 you'll speak in Parliament for the first time, on behalf of Diabetes UK and in 2014 you'll speak in Parliament for the second time, on behalf of JDRF. You'll realise that you're one of the very few people who don't mind speaking in public and later in 2014 you'll make use of that blessing again and speak for JDRF again at one of their charity galas. You'll learn that you have the ability to do something about being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, you'll be determined and you'll be a voice for other young people and people with Type 1. March 2016 will see you fly to Glasgow to be a professional blogger for Diabetes UK and in October 2016 you'll be invited to celebrate 30 years of progress with JDRF and you'll present flowers to HRH the Duchess of Cornwall.

Type 1 Diabetes will bring you frustration and tears and lots of moments where you'll wonder why you were dealt the cards that you were, these times will be especially prominent when you have to go to A&E because of Diabetic ketoacidosis or when you're awake in the middle of the night treating a low blood sugar or feeling that ache in your muscles you'll get when your blood sugar is high. What you won't know when you're diagnosed tomorrow on June 21st 2009 though is that you'll do amazing things and you'll be proud of what you've achieved and understand that you were diagnosed for a reason, and deciding to create your blog and deciding to raise awareness and be an ambassador will be one of the best decisions you'll make.

In fact, in eight years you'll be standing next to a canal in Amsterdam with other diabetic people taking photos and pondering how you got there and realising how crazy it is that Type 1 Diabetes brought you all together. You'll make new friends, new connections and you'll have a sense of fulfillment and you'll live your life with Type 1 alongside you and it will become your routine, like brushing your teeth...like breathing.

Tomorrow will be June 21st 2017, and you've lived with Type 1 Diabetes for eight years.

Contact me

Name

Email
*

Message
*

Follow me on Twitter

'Best diabetes art'

My post- Moments, won 'Best diabetes art' for the July 2013 edition of 'Best of the 'Betes Blogs' This is the post: http://elshuckle.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/moments.html click the photo to see the other winners.